Erotica

The hungry toil a lot. Sometimes it’s an invisible growl. Sometimes, an arid wail. Too weak for anything from having been out of grain or fruits or rain. Chin resting on the palm, frail fingers stretching just below the lower lip, they scour their flaky surface. Their quiet is disquieting. They’re not a frequent meet. And ironically enough, they wear yellow (which to me has always been a conspicuous colour).

I often find myself wanting to be held closely- a starched embrace, a tug of the hand, a breath into the side of my neck. Most of living happens without meeting with any of this. All I can do at such times is reach for a warm pair of socks and slip my feet in. And that’s what I did, seated in the wrought iron chair of the open half of Café Kunga of a town in the lower Himalayas. It may not have been all too chilly but the grayish blue clouds looked just like the colour of my jacket that twirled around my bag and it made me want to pull it over my shoulders just to know a layer of warmth closely. I could see it among the loud number of colourful high-school student-travellers at the table behind me, the warmth. It was visible in the conversation between an old couple and a brown haired girl at the table next to mine. It hung in the silence another grey-haired couple shared- long gazes at each other-sitting at another adjoining table (The wife, she looked over at me a few times, possible wondering what I was looking around at). I met with it too, momentarily at my table, as the waiter came to me with my order of a tea. Yet, it wasn’t quite there.

I tried to create it between my pen and the pages of my journal as I sat there with my hands jiving in my running letters, a method to the madness of my feelings. Finally it spurred. In the form of a few, quiet tears, actually. The warmth. It melted the scum inside my nose as if it were soft ice. I didn’t care if there was anybody watching. My tea was done and I was leaving anyway; there’s nothing I’m going to find here. Not that I knew what I wanted. I got up, ready to get out of there as I began collecting my things, when I saw a girl at the table diagonally behind me, sitting without company. She appeared to be as old as me, if not younger, an IPad in her hand that she was staring at. Should I go up to her? Just two travelers befriending each other. What will I say though… what will we have to talk about? Rejection from a complete stranger couldn’t be all that downright. Easing my hair down from a bun, I went up to her.

As it turns out, rejection from a stranger CAN feel quite curt. I asked her if I could join her at her table.

“You want my table?” is what she understood of it.

“NO. Could I sit here at this table…with you?” A closer look at her features made me wonder if she was from Myanmar or Nepal or Bhutan. She had an expression of worry on her face. “Nepal!” I thought. It was the morning of the most disastrous earthquake in the history of Nepal.

“Are you from Nepal?” I asked her looking at the maps changing shapes on her Ipad.

“No. From Japan.” The way she said this was both meek and cold. I gathered I wasn’t welcome.

“Oh okay. I’ll just go back then. I’m sorry for being a bother.” I said, hoping that would make some sense to her. My moist eyes looked for a place to hide. Now I felt self-conscious; I wanted to leave without having anybody see my tears and rushed off to the roofed half of the restaurant from where the exit was.

I put my hair back into a bun, making my way to the payment counter. The relief of the knowledge that I would never see any of the faces of those around my table at the other, now invisible end of the café! The payment counter, which stood before me, was in no mood to entertain me either; there was nobody attending it. I looked around for almost a minute. Still nobody. I turned around my head again and a waiter at a distance raised his hand indicating that somebody would be there soon. I can’t lay a finger on why, but just being the one to occupy the air and the land of this beautiful town was a seething disappointment. My eyes, now dry, turned toward door of the café: a Caucasian man sat at the table beside it; with a straight back, his hand leaning next to a cup on the table, his eyes staring straight. Or maybe he was looking down into his cup, because when I found myself walk up to him I remember feeling swooned for the briefest moment as he looked up with green eyes. Zero shits were given about possible rejection by another stranger.

“I was just getting bored all by myself. Would it be okay if I took your table?”

Blank stare. Ah..European!

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes.” He said with two heavy nods.

“Would be okay if I sat down with you?”

“Okay..ok.” He pointed toward the chair without a smile.

He didn’t smile. His ears were both pierced and he wore tiny silver rings on each. His reddish hair was cut crew and he didn’t smile. He wore yellow and he didn’t smile.

If I were holding him back- seeing as his cup was empty- he let me. I did a lot of superficial asking and he did very thoughtful monosyllabic answering. It was difficult for him to form sentences, I could see that. He would squint his eyes as if to convey the question in his mind. It seemed to me he repeatedly decided against letting it out of his lips. His lips were so red! He wasn’t particularly sexy…that’s not how I saw him. Not yet. And just then a slight line of his teeth pushed through his lips. He was smiling.

Just like how sometimes a trail of sweat can be felt making its way down your eyebrow, I felt my slime slowly ooze out of me. Too soon. Despite his leisurely behaviour, I couldn’t still tell with certitude if I was wanted too. He asked me a couple of personal questions- if I had siblings, where I was from, how old I was- none suggestive of touch or sexual intrigue. There were long pauses awkward enough for him to fly his thoughts back Reims in France (where he was from).

I had to bring him back. At least try to, one more time. I took my chapstick out of the bag and drew a line around my lips without looking at him and then, I let my hair down. He did turn to me albeit in small words and refreshed his order for a coffee. I, too, ordered an omlette after realizing I had worked up an appetite. Our conversation took a turn for something slightly above humdrum.

He studied literature in college. Whom did he study?

“Ittorgo…you heard of him? He’s very famous.”

“I’m sorry. What? I know Sartre and Vernes. Could you repeat that?”

He meant Victor Hugo. For the first time we had a good ol’ comedy-of-accents chuckle. And yet, there was no flirting or teasing and moreover it had begun to feel he really was just being polite. I was just going to finish the Omlette and leave him alone.

And then, it started raining. It was quite a burst that was here to last.

“Which hotel are you staying?” He questioned!

“Not too far. It’s a hidden one.. a few steps ahead of Kalsang Guest House.” I said with description, as if he’d care.

“Oh..that’s where I’m staying. Kalsang.” He said with the straightest face.

He brought it up, not me. Now that I was stuck with him…

“When do you leave?”

“Today. I have a bus this evening.” He said looking at his watch. He was going to Nainital, which meant we weren’t going to be in the same state by the end of the day. And here I was giving persistence one last chance.

“What time do you have to leave?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“7 O’clock …in the evening” his face showing no qualms about the odd question.

I was thinking around the restricted time at hand if I were running the bleak likeliness of bedding him, when the strange, flimsy truth hit me: We hadn’t exchanged names. “Simon.” He answered as we both laughed at this situation that we’d only seen happen in movies.

The pouring stopped at 5.15pm and as if the most obvious act in the world, we left the café together. On our way out, the waiter who tended to our table handed out each of us our own bills as if another most obvious thing in the world. I was surprised at seeing him on his feet; he was so much taller than he appeared and I realized I was about to feel very conscious about being seen with him. He slowed down to light a cigarette. His tiny backpack looked funny around his back. He continued smoking through our little trek up to our respective closely located guest-houses and timed its stubbing perfectly at his stop.

There were two seconds of staring at the feet just at the juncture where we could have split and not more than that; because I wasn’t just me, I was me of the mountains. In the mountains, there are guest-houses built upon rocky slopes with pipelines lacing them. In one such guest house, I had a room to myself. In the room, there were windows framed by lacy curtains. Through the windows could be seen windows to other people’s lives in the mountains.

He sat at the edge of my bed without moving. I mirrored him, sitting at a distance but along the same edge. I imagined how we looked from behind us- both seeming to stare at the window ahead. I pulled out a metal locket nestled between my breasts. I wrapped in my cold palm, feeling the heat it had absorbed of my body.

“Hey look, I bought this today. It’s got this Tibetan lettering…” I held it to him; I wanted him to pull me close by it. He did seem to read it all right but because it wasn’t very Indian of me, he seemed taken aback because of what I said next.

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

“What? You want to have sex with me?”

“Yes..if that’s okay with you.”

He nodded with a smile that was back on his lips at its widest.

“I’m a virgin though…” (God I hate that word) I ask him with disregard to the word. I walk up from my place to stand facing him, my face bent down to his.

“If I asked you to take my virginity, would that be a problem?” Joe asks Jerome in Nymphomaniac Vol. 1.

Jerome- “No I don’t see a problem.”

***

Not only had I never been with a French person but also I’d never French-kissed. I’ve kissed with man going first each time, tongue swathing in before the lips can graze together. Mouthfuls that are not to be gulped. So fleshy that the pressure of the sucking mellows- nothing that qualifies for one-at-a-time. He was different; I’d learn in due time that he, as a matter of fact, only French-kissed.

The grassy rows of his hair alternated with my fingers gripping his head. My hands drew him closer in with more power than necessary for French-kissing like that-the prick of the sucking forming tiny circles on different portions of my lips.

He still hadn’t begun undressing me though. In fact, he hadn’t yet declared any of this as comfortable to him. So I went first- my brown pants sliding down to reveal the glow of tiny hair-growth along the length of my legs. I didn’t look at him to see if he saw me doing this. I put my cold, rings-clad fingers around his neck to sip him some more. That did it- an inkling of comfort at least; he put his cold fingers inside my underwear, a star on my bum. He just let it be, without the possession of a squeeze or a rub. I wanted to whimper inside his mouth, let him know of my approval, but he didn’t let me into his mouth too well. So my throaty noise of a sex whimper fell loudly by his ear. I licked his ear-lobe. His other ear being run along by my fingers as I pulled the ring pierced into it.

He tugged on my t-shirt- a gesture to tell me to take it off. I wanted him to take it off so I told him. I realized I’d not considered the language difference at all as my request just went past him. Pre-occupied about this, I lost tally of who took whose clothes off eventually.

What I do remember is, he hadn’t touched me once. Not since the last touch. My underclothes were still on while I sat facing him, both my knees bent over around him. My fingers, excited to feel his rise, flanked his member stark naked. Although I’d never had penetrative sex before, this was the third penis I was seeing. Never before had I cared for or understood the drama around dick-sizes than I did now. It was the pinkest and the biggest penis and I hadn’t even taken a full look at it yet because I got held off by a hiss melting inside my ear that said to me in earnest, “Will you kiss my sex?”

His ‘sex’ I kissed. I bent all the way to it and lipped the head of his penis, which appeared blurry because I saw it that closely and unclearly. I would have sucked on it more wholly if there had not been pre-cum on him. There was no time to feel the shock of the unforeseen presence because I felt I retched just a little bit, looking away from him.

He was taking over. He rose above me and made a cage of his body around me. I took my bra off; I knew he wasn’t going to do it. I put my index finger forward to feel his lips. He smiled the slightest smile as I did that, reaffirming for me that it was indeed the same guy sitting across the table from me just a couple of hours ago. He kissed me a French and I frenched his neck, vapidly trying to tell him he should do the same. Contrary to my previous ‘Indian’ experiences, he didn’t reach for my breasts at all even as the bra was off.

That was going to be the extent of the foreplay and I kind of anticipated that since he had to catch a bus soon. I broke us off as I remembered to get the lube I had in my bag, along with a condom. I was suddenly aware of being fully naked as I ran up to get it. Through the myriad little gaps in lacy curtains over the windows, I could see the windows of the building ahead. Was the scene of this room a visible show? I wondered more curiously how this room looked from the outside. How did WE look on the outside?

Once again I was under him. I rubbed the lube on his tall penis sheathed by the prophylactic. I smothered my heavy breath, which I now realize I shouldn’t have. I got the sense that broken breathing would help break my nervousness. He went for my underwear now. He peeled it down softly. He drove his hard-on to me with no further warning. I had my legs opened up in a V with soles of my feet to the bed. How would I have known better? He kept repeatedly crashing on to the gates. It was a massage to the clitoris and because he went hard at it I held his penis in my hand to make him stop.

“Use your finger.”

He put his middle finger in without folding the other fingers. It didn’t feel at all like the previous scathing times I’ve been finger-banged; the lube had worked its magic. I felt a lot lighter for this meant I could take on his penis that much more comfortably. As I led him toward my cervix, I suddenly took cognizance of how blazingly swollen he was in contrast to my pin-size hole. I stopped. He grabbed. My greasy hand around his penis leapt to his plain back and so did my other hand because an unmissable searing charge told me he had torn me open.

I screamed from my clenched throat. The sear, it was here to stay. He wasn’t making it go away. I thought we were both trying to alleviate my suffering when he demanded, “Give my your legs.” I thought he must have sensed it too but he didn’t. He was just trying to make me more comfortable at tolerating the staggering pain rather than bringing me ease or (imagine my utter horror at this) pleasure. He pushed all the way in and didn’t pull halfway out. All the weight of his body concentrated on his member, every inch of which I was to carry. Intense torment to one, immense release to another.

I gasped and cried from breathing through all that pain. My hands slapped onto his back, which felt hot for all the blood collected underneath his skin. I gathered his back’s tight skin in reaction to his movements. When it grew too harsh, I told him to stop. He either pretended to not hear or he pretended to not understand, but pretend he did. I couldn’t throw his power off-kilter. He didn’t stop.

I know the implications of saying this. While it happens, it doesn’t form itself up in a word. Wrongfulness, perpetration, sin and all such ideas are a later confrontation. What remains of immediate urgency is for it to leave you be.

Something had come over him- he was now jamming into me in a circular motion. One of his hands lay on my left thigh, which I couldn’t feel. It occurred to me just then that there was going to be blood! There was blood now- flowing or dripping or spurting- just not visible from here. But it was definitely there for I still wasn’t removed from the feeling of being pierced into with one’s ceaseless drive to completion.

The fan above was going in circles too. I looked past him, or through him, to take different look at the act. I wasn’t looking at the fan now; I was looking at me. I saw his bloody pink back from over me and I saw me betraying what should have been a wincing expression. I couldn’t have seen if this seemed visible through the lacy curtains of window behind me, but I did see that it wasn’t. I came back when he finished.

A couple of deep breaths over my chest and he raised his head to face me. His green eyes had depravity in them. But he smiled more than ever. I didn’t understand what to say so I asked if he came and he said that he did. He pulled out and there it was- on the sagging condom, on the shining flowers of the bedsheet- in all its darkened, glorious red. There was more than I imagined there would be.

He sat up in bed. I sat up facing him, my crotch pressing down onto the mattress…shhh it’s over. They showed no blood on Joe, I remembered then. I asked him to check his time; he had a few minutes he said, between now and the bus to Nainital. He ran his fingers down my waist to the back of my right thigh. I could still feel the blood ooze from my new opening.

We went in for another one. He wanted me on top. With some trepidation and a lot of soreness, I acquiesced. I couldn’t move.

“It hurts more than I thought it would.”

He started pushing upward at me and that just felt wrong. We got up so he’d take over. The lube hadn’t helped much and my vagina was still blazing. I coaxed him into some foreplay, putting my legs around him, rising above him. I led his mouth to my right nipple and he French-kissed it. Rather than the breasts, he sucked around my cleavage. I felt nice but also made me want him to get over with. I remember being particular screechy and noisy from this time, because when he finished I fell quiet and that snapped me out of the agony. At one point, I wanted it over badly, so my hands trudged their way to his butt and dug hard to make him climax faster. He stayed thieving-silent throughout, both times. He again raised his face to me after getting done. I reached for the contours of his lips. He traced the line of my left eyebrow with his finger and the length of the left of my collarbone in three kisses. He looked love-struck.

***

The satiated save. They don’t let themselves forget what it is like to yearn. They make no mistakes or at least don’t make the same mistake twice.

It was much later that I discovered he had caused an injury. It bled even after I cleaned up. A tissue of flesh seemed to hang from my hole- that which was once inside was now out.

He had excused himself to use the bathroom when I registered how cold it had been. Running barefoot across the room I managed to slip on my gray sweater over my naked self. I took the moment to make sense of what had happened; he had not been the nicest and yet somewhere I found in me a slight wish to go with him. He was out in no time, clothes back on. We both knew it was time for him to get going. I went ahead to hug him goodbye. He put his hand on my ass as I put mine around his neck. Lost in the middle of this last French kiss, I felt his swollen penis, past his shorts and through my sweater.

The wheels of my shopping cart made irritable whirring sounds; it was empty. I pulled it down the aisles of the super market that was scantily crowded as it was a week day- something I had planned. I was very close to the rack. All those previous visits it had never occurred to me what those colourful bottles had been sitting there for, right next to stacks of condom packs.

We had been tight on time- he had an audition to get to, I had some writing to submit. Sex was equivocally off the table. Off the bed. Yet he moved thoroughly over me. My pants were off but he had his on. I consider taking each other’s clothes off, a part of the move so it was unto me to unzip him.

This aisle, however wasn’t as scanty as I’d have liked. To add to my discomfort, only men could be seen both up and down this section. Heavy breaths and pretend-shopping later, I went back over to the rack. I had come thus far. Having had the most hurting experience at getting finger-fucked, I knew now the dire importance of wet.

The lube is not advertised, and it is not even called ‘lube’ on the face of its own bottle. A little read-through tells you that it’s instead a ‘massager’. This was weeks before I found out these can be bought online in India too and months before a website in the country was taken to court for selling anal lube and other sex tools. I had been living with my parents, which made the newfound information as reassuring as a used condom, for obviously, there remained no chance of availing the service.

The rack had exactly two types of lube from the same brand placed by a variety of condoms made by different brands. Lubes are expensive- the fat bottle and the thin bottle, both. And if this isn’t discouraging of the purchase, the thin bottle (which is not as expensive and volumed as the fat one) stood boxed inside a locked plastic container, the first of its kind, exclusively designed for such products by this franchise of supermarket. I picked it up anyway and tried to absorb the written-instructions in my apprehensive state of mind. Did I need to give in to this self-induced cautiousness in my head? I would later find out that my little cousin brother, whose car I had borrowed to get there (not that he would have minded it), and I were at the supermarket, “shopping” at the same time. The container made it difficult for me to find out the exact price of the lube that was printed at the bottom of the bottle. I looked around and saw an attendant… a male attendant, not very far away. Feigning confidence, I asked him why the bottle was inside an additional cover. All he had to say was that the bottle could be taken out only at the time of billing at the cash counter.

I was on my back.

His head moved away, downward,

clearing my line of sight;

I looked with wonder-

more of disbelief-

at a leaf held by the ceiling.

I felt him dig,

“Are you inserting yourself?”

“Just the finger. Look.”

My wince wasn’t abject

as the ripping took effect.

“it’s like a dive

into a shallow water”

I told my self.

The screech took its time

Before it could core.

First the second,

then the forth

and the sixth

time of what is called

a pounding.

“That’s all I can take”

a white lie be told-

Not so true as fake.

Although it was terribly uncomfortable where his finger lay, I didn’t mind his penis to my stomach. It is, in fact, my pierced bellybutton that has been met with some hesitation, every now and then. A neem tree rustled from the slow winds, outside his window. I caught a whiff of its bitter-dank fragrance. My fingers caught him in new vigour, my hand to his bank. Snugly, he put his hand around mine, around him. On a different day I may have thought of this a weakness, but evidently, I’m a lot more open now and accept that we always have something new to learn. And to teach. And to remember the time when at drawing classes my free-hand concentric circles always touched, and that would entail a lot of erasing and re-drawing mess. This gratitude, I let him know: I palm-pressed his balls.

I went to the rack a second time because I talked new confidence into me. Earlier, I had budged and turned away from the aisle what with the plastic container for an anti-theft, lame-ass measure. But wait a minute! An important detail almost escaped me: the expiry date. Lubes must retire. It was a lot easier to pick up the bottle this time, mostly because there really wasn’t anybody around but a female attendant. Full advantage at hand, I asked her to read it for me; in retrospect though, I really asked her for it just so I wouldn’t be alone bearing this supposed embarrassment.

“May, 2015” she said. “Thanks” I nodded. The moment turned into a peculiar kind of sadness that plagued my mind from deep inside. In a matter of seconds I thought long and hard, and practically, and realised there was no narrowest chance I’d get together sexually with anybody within four months. I kept the lube back.

Madhav and I have known each other long enough for him to bring up that it was quite unlike me to be at a party where the head-count of acquainted socials went beyond three. Or so I inferred from his unusual interest in my motives. Or he was just trying at a small talk; it had been long since we met and the assortment in the social atmosphere was such that it created a bit of an undulation before we could find common conversational ground. In response, I just narrowed my eyes at him and internally shook my head at the question when, something took him away. During this time I went to look for the host, a friend from college who had always been friends with friends, who had mixed an interesting Long Island Ice Tea at home, and I needed to get drunk very badly. I had my qualms about spending my new year’s eve like this- away from home and away from friends I’d been meaning to be with, and Madhav’s question had just underscored it.

He found me again and asked me a second time, “Why are you really here?”

It took me a moment to gather my thoughts for he seemed especially prescient this time. I may have gulped a little because for a nanosecond I wondered how he could possibly know what was on my mind. I replied with a meek “Why would I confide in you, Maddo?” He scoffed at me with a because-I’m-your-friend face, still expecting a reply. Of course I wasn’t going to tell him.

There’s a reason I borrowed my sister’s racy red cropped shirt to go with my skin-hugging brown pants, the first piece of cloth I’d bought in months! I have let my life draw big circles of mundane, lately. So I‘m constantly trying to centre it with lasting explosives. Sometimes it’s like walking in spirals, only I never know whether it’s going inward or outward, away from focus.

This was one of those faint, rare times when I sensed that his was an inward flowing spiral bringing me so close to the explosive centre that it was now visible. With visibility came recognition and it was rather surprising to see Joseph there. True we all went to the same college albeit not through the same time- the year I began college was his final year there-yet, a Venn diagram of our social circles would show you how small our intersecting spaces were. And thus it was decided. Him. I saw him look back at my direction and his lips moved forming a ‘hi’ of familiarity. Approach. In other words, the alcohol had taken effect and how!

There was a cigarette between his fingers. There was a line of sweat inside my palm. I rubbed it against his jacket as I put a hand around him to say hello. The last time I’d met him, he was with a mutual friend whom I’d later made out with. I couldn’t have told then that, this one would be next.

We shared the cigarette while talking- he offered it (I plead not guilty). And with this my courage furthered and I came right down to it. I think I pulled his collar a little to bring his head closer to mine, the agile shorty I am. Assured that his ear was right by my lips so nobody could hear me, I uttered the words. That was that. I led and he followed. Oh the relief of accurate estimation! It was quite a long shot though; I knew he knew me by face but I couldn’t have told if he knew my full, real name.

Lead I did but where to? My dear host friend had conveniently passed out in her room. We wandered into her kitchen and drunkenly realized within a moment that was just hitting the wall because that was people’s bar this evening. And kitchens don’t have doors. “Point to any door and you’ll have me in” I said to him. Alcohol’s flair for Hollywood-corny, I tell you! I was hoping Jose wouldn’t go for the other housemate’s room. I suspected this housemate had tried at getting it on with me earlier but I’d pretended not to understand and, it would have been a sad paradox if someone else scored within the confines of his room while he himself didn’t. And here, Joseph wasn’t pointing to any door. So I led the way, again, and landed us inside the only unattached bathroom of their flat.

I latched the door dramatically hard. That easy, I thought to myself.

Well, not really. He wanted to talk. Correction: he wanted me to talk.

He asked and I answered elaborately, animatedly, thoughtfully meaning hints in subtext. We chose opposite walls to lean against, next to the commode. Neither was making the move. So I initiated under the pretext of explaining a point with an example, I touched his lips and unzipped his jacket a little. I felt the back of my neck heat up. It wasn’t until I was further in the middle of a sentence explaining a different point that his mouth grabbed mine.

If the rest of my sentence could travel from my head to my mouth to him, with no help of a voice, it would have with a kiss with that kind of pull. He let it out in careless lavishness. I let it in with an oblivious surrender. He had my head between both his hands. And all this while there was hardly any tongue involved. I let my hand inside his t-shirt, letting my index finger travel from his navel to the middle of his chest to his right nipple. With my thumb I pressed hard into it and followed it with a smearing motion. This made him gasp, his lips losing touch with mine. In one swift move of a single hand he took my shirt off. I hadn’t noticed before how cloudy the feel of its cotton was. I would have to return it- I cringed internally. I unzipped the rest of his jacket and he took care of his shirt too.

The next thing I remember I had him pushed by the wall of the non-commode side of the L-shaped bathroom. Both my hands now took his head between them and I let my tongue French off to the roof of his mouth. His hair was cropped very short so I couldn’t grab on to it when I tried to bunch it in my hand. The flesh on his back, on the other hand, so evenly easy and soft, and in no time it melted between each of my fingers, clenched inside both my hands. His hand had reached inside my jeans. He wasn’t as much tugging at my ass as his fingers ventured into my butt-split. It is a quite tussle for most to locate the V-hole from the front and here he set out to make a way into it from behind! I pulled myself away at this. He must’ve been slightly taken aback.

When he opened his eyes from the broken moment, he squinted at the harsh yellow glow of the incandescent light. It indeed was a very bold move; this was, by far, the most turning on move of the foreplay. The jeans had hugged my skin for too long. I took them off, my thighs going back to Joseph’s able hands. He pulled my leg up by my knee while I moved my lips to get his collarbone. Time for a roll over- pulling my knee further upward he put my back against the wall. I put my other leg around his waist without knowing if his lanky build could handle my weight.

Short people’s sizes can mislead so always be aware that they may have astonishing bone weight, as do I. But this position wass pretty comfy-if he couldn’t handle my weight he could always pin me further up to the wall. I shifted a little so my heels dug deep into his ass. My otherwise perpetually cold feet were very warm right now.

This was my first go at drunken intimacy. At this point I felt that there should have always been more of this. Not just broken inhibitions from the drinking but your energies get hyper-accelerated. Sobriety projects greater awareness of nakedness of bodies, which makes you flinch just a little. Something I should heed to, with future encounters.

My weight must have been getting to him so he suggested dirtying the bathroom floor. Of course I agreed. At once he laid my wrapped-around self down to the floor. From this angle I saw a rupture on his shoulder. Neither have I hickey-ed anyone before, nor have I been marked. The question had begun forming slowly. I never would have believed it would take as long as it did to rise to the surface. But it had to be done because he knew he already had the answer and I didn’t. And so it was up to me, “Do you have a condom on you?”

If I were squandering my virginity (if such a thing even exists), it was going to be every bit worth it. With him. Like that. The bathroom had black tiles; if I were going to bleed, chances were it would go unnoticed. Add to that, somebody turned the light off, as if that would be such a bad thing.

He said he didn’t have protection and that he’s sorry for the disappointment. He didn’t need to apologies but little did he know he was with an egalitarian and it was as much my responsibility as his.

Still, somehow, all this while on the floor, he didn’t have his underpants on. I asked permission to get his penis. He liked that I circled the tip of his penis with my thumb. I always like to feel the erection as it takes place. Up and down, down and up. He liked it and I knew because I asked him and when I did, I made a whole new unnatural discovery about me. I had an accent on! This was kind of a side-effect of the alcohol- I had adorned a different version. I asked him again and again and again and he answered affirmatively each time. Aroused was his new name.

“Can I bite into you?” Wait, what? Not what he asked but the way he asked it- he had an accent too! Or it was the alcohol playing quirky games. You can bite me with your sharpest teeth and you still wouldn’t be able to rupture me. I have magic-skin, baby. And just like that, we went down on me. Didn’t realize that was also a way to ask permission for cunnilingus. Of course, it made me flinch. I felt I owed him this ask: “You do know I’m in town temporarily right?”

We had not known each other beyond a countable number of times. The only conversation I had with him in college was once when through my housemate’s friend he’d landed at my flat and had wandered into my room without realizing I was already inside there. My amicable self helped him out of the situation as we made a light conversation. He used to have boyish long hair back then, looked like a dark-complexioned grown-up version of Ellar Coltrane. And seeing him in such contrasting light right now…

It was very sweet to know we’re understood about that and he still continued down there. Moaning reached a high pitch. The way he broke it off to shush me only left me wanting more. But the downside of the dehydration was taking effect and I just wasn’t wet. He gave me a feeling that he was maybe experimenting too.. his dry tongue kept on tearing at my vaginal slit. If you’re adept at it, or plain willing to learn, you should know you’d have better and easier accomplishment just by persisting with the clitoris. You know, how they say that secrets sometimes stare you in the face? Well, the clit is often leaning to you at arousal. Anyway, his sheer audacity had me; the light had been put back on and my bush was on full display, which didn’t budge him from his intent. After shushing me he went back on to lick me there. I refrained from turning or shifting too much in my place. My hands involuntarily moved to his head, wanting to thrust all his mouth into me. But I resisted and pushed him just slightly inward. I did not know how not to moan so as to encourage him to keep at it and I didn’t know how to keep it down. There were people outside, spread out to parts of the same tiny flat. He was compelled to break it off once again; he rose up to me and said “shush, shoooosh.” I knew I had better obey this. Drunken sex drawbacks were showing- my holes were dry, his lips parched. It also may have been the reason he couldn’t cum from the handjob. I let out a smothered moan. He put his fingers close to my face to help me out: I sucked hard at his salty, salty fingertips. The more I sucked, the saltier it got, and that was all I could take. He thrust his tongue deeper one last time before he chose to finally break it off.

He rose back up to my face and I put his nose between my lips. He put his hand at the back my head and this time bit my neck in one whole chomp. Another bite on my left shoulder and, the next under my right chest. A dark current shot up my head. I began pinching his waist and held him away by the scruff of his neck. He wrung one of my breasts vehemently and nibbled at the other. Just as I felt a sigh escape the trench of my throat, he asked “Do you want to go down on me?” Oh, I thought you’d never ask. Yep, if he hadn’t said it I would have passed on it tonight. If you get me this high on sex, of course my egalitarianism will go take a hike. “Okay. Sure.” It’s only the most decent thing to do.

He was swift to turn over. I ran the back of my hand apprehensively down his midriff before letting it settle on his penis. With a slight lift, I let him inside my mouth. First, just the tip- a little pull of the lips, then the tongue. It was his turn to moan and mine to make him. Within the next suck, I gave it my all. Inward. Then outward. His penis feeling the texture of my tongue, he gave me his first groan. Each of our taste buds as different as each of our fingerprints: mine, the cause of his sensations, his, an effect of thirst.

I overestimate my firsts. My discoveries let me down. An emerging gag-reflex stopped me. I wanted to double-check if it was really happening so slid him back into my mouth. It really did make me retch. Perhaps, next shot with a flavoured condom? Unprotected oral sex is anyway riskier for the woman. I expressed it to him. He felt it and let the temptation wane.

Feral and hyper, I took my mouth into his. “Pull my hair. I’d like that.” I said it the way I’d always thought of saying it. He did but I wanted it to be harder than that. My earrings looped out. He heard those drop to the floor and remarked so.

I repeated, “Pull my hair. I’d like that.”

“Bite my ear.”

He got a hang of how things were moving now. I chewed just the one ear, as he seemed to fully concentrate on its sensation now.

“We should get dressed.” His call, not mine.

I said okay but contrarily kissed him some more. It had been longer than either of us had imagined being in the dankness of this unanimously used bathroom. I felt too dizzy to get back on my feet. I managed somehow, only to be pinned back on to the wall. Whatever little moisture my lips retained was lost in this long, last kiss smacked on me. I returned it with an equally prickly dry pull.

“Put your legs around me like before.” He remembered. I pleasured in it. He thrust his penis flat into my stomach. I heard him hazily make a guttural sound. In one long embrace I pushed my nipples into his chest and then, let him go.

The lights went out again and yet again I felt too dizzy to get back on my feet whilst he had already finished putting his clothes on. He helped me locate my clothes and soon I was dressed too. It was decided we’d go one after the other in order to avoid causing the pronounced Indian scandal. He let himself out first; I needed a moment to adjust to the shift in my body temperature.

I took a look back at the floor and I remembered something. There in the dark lay shining my pair of shed earrings.